September brought on some exciting changes in our household. My son started daycare and I made the shift to start working on my new business, Let’s Talk About Race. It has been a lot of fun to work on this again after a long hiatus!
Let’s Talk About Race started in 2020. Following the killing of George Floyd, I began a deep dive into the topics of racism, anti-racism, and internalized racism. A board on which I sat on at the time had wanted to put out a statement, as many corporations and organizations were doing at that time, stating their anti-racism and support for Black people, Indigenous people and people of colour. I could see that those behind the idea were well-intentioned, but for me it just felt so empty. All the statements that were coming out just felt so empty. What does it even mean to be anti-racist? Can anyone at any of those corporations really tell me? Or are we all just trying to stay on trend?
So I set out to find out what anti-racism means to me. I sought out books, podcasts, documentaries, articles - anything I could get my hands on - that could maybe help me make sense of why the &*!# we are in the situation we are in. It was - and still is - a period of education, self-discovery, rage, and profound sadness.
I was working at the time, and I was conducting all this research in my own time. A dream began to develop that I could become an anti-racism educator. Two people really influenced me at this time that helped make it into a reality. The first was my boss, who is a fellow person of colour, and someone I felt safe enough with to talk about these issues openly. At that time, she was probably only 1 of 2 people I felt safe to talk to about this stuff - which I still find so wild. She validated me, she saw me, she heard me, she understood me. She asked me if I would want to do a presentation of my work for our staff - and just like that, I had my first audience. The second was a former professor. I had it in my head that perhaps I should go back to school for a Masters in Race Studies so I would be qualified to be an anti-racism educator. When we chatted about this possibility, she urged me to just try things out first and see what happens. She validated my lived experience as enough qualification to do this work and her words helped me have the confidence to move forward with my ideas.
I was able to present a couple of times in 2020-early 2021, then I went on maternity leave. Around May this year, I felt ready to start working on it again. I built a website, began networking and slowly have found some more audiences for this fall. I’ve updated my presentation and am excited to be customizing the workshop for different audiences. It is so rejuvenating to be back immersed in researching race relations and thinking of ways that I can make this material engaging and accessible for others - in hopes that we can increase race allyship and racial awareness slowly, slowly, over time.
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